In many instances it is easier and more efficient for a user to reconcile statements of events, such as statements of financial transactions conducted by the user, in hard copy/paper form than is possible in an electronic form. In this regard, the hard copy/paper form allows the user the ability to highlight, strike-through or otherwise mark a text line associated with an event/transaction that the user desires to indicate as a reconciled event/transaction (i.e., an event/transaction that the user verifies has occurred and is accurately indicated in the listing/statement. As the user progresses through the statement/listing reconciling events, the user can readily ascertain which events/transactions have been reconciled, based on the highlighting/marking or the like and which events/transactions remain to be reconciled, based on the lack of highlighting/marking or the like. Once all of the user has completed the process and all of the events/transactions have been highlighted/marked to indicate reconciliation, the hard copy/paper form of the statement/listing provides the user with “at a glance” proof that all of the events/transactions have been reconciled and that no unexpected or inaccurate events/transactions exist on the statement/listing.
In the electronic form reconciliation becomes somewhat problematic. Certain forms of files, such as a Portable Document Format (PDF) files or the like, are not readily configured to allow for editing. Such files would require printing in order to perform reconciliation, which is viewed as a less than desirable resource and time consuming endeavor. In other instances, in which the statement/listing is presented in an editable format, such as a web-based, online or mobile presentation of a statement/listing, other problems exist. For example, typically a listing/statement includes a large number of events/transactions, which cannot all be displayed simultaneously on the display of the user's device, resulting in the need for scrolling through various pages in order to view and reconcile all of the events/transactions in the listing/statement. This problem becomes heightened when the user's device is a portable device, such as a smart phone or the like, which has a smaller display than a conventional computing device (e.g., a PC, laptop or the like) and, as such, is limited in the number of events/transactions that can simultaneously be displayed on the device's display (i.e., more page scrolling is warranted).
Furthermore, electronic listings/statements typically present events/transactions in single-line format, each line representing an event/transaction and including limited information about the event/transaction (e.g., date, transacting entity, amount or the like). In order for the user to see further details associated with the event/transaction, which are typically required in the reconciliation process, the events/transactions in the listing/statement are configured as activatable keys/widgets/soft buttons. Once the user activates a key/widget/soft button, the user is provided with an expanded view (i.e., multiple lines of text or the like) that includes further details associated with the event/transaction. While a user may subsequently collapse the expanded view back to the single-line format, in many instances, the expanded view is the only way that a user can mark or otherwise indicate in the electronic format that an event/transaction has been reconciled. In such instances, the user is left with no other option than to present all of the events/transactions in the list in the expanded view in order to complete the reconciliation process. Such expanded views exasperates the problem of presenting information within the limited confines of a display area and, as such, result in the need for even more page scrolling. Such page scrolling makes completing the reconciliation process a daunting task because the user is apt to unknowingly omit one or more events/transactions from the reconciliation process. In this regard, the page scrolling intensive reconciliation process provides the user with no “at a glance” means for customer to insure that all events/transactions within the listing/statement have been reconciled. Alternatively, a user may expand all the lines initially, prior to reconciliation, then collapse each multi-line field after reconciliation to “mark” each entry as reconciled. However, such a practice is time-consuming and inconvenient as it requires the user to expand and collapse all of the entries, which necessitates even further scrolling/paging.
Therefore, a need exists to develop systems, apparatus, methodologies and the like for reconciling electronic listings/statements of events/transactions. The desired systems and the like should provide the same, or improved, ease and/or efficiency than hard copy/paper processing of statement reconciliation. In this regard, the desired systems and the like should provide for a user to be able to readily identify events/transactions that are reconciled and provide the user with an “at a glance” means of indication of the completion of the reconciliation process. Moreover, the desired systems and the like should limit the amount of page scrolling, regardless of the platform on which the user is viewing the listing/statement of events/transactions (i.e., the platform on which the user is conducting the reconciliation process).